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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28249767">Even after it’s all been unplugged, a constant hum</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/streetsamurai/pseuds/streetsamurai'>streetsamurai</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A constant hum [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon-Typical Violence, Drug Use, Drugged Sex, Dubious Consent, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Self-Harm, Substance Abuse, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:46:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,082</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28249767</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/streetsamurai/pseuds/streetsamurai</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>V’s been fucked up long before the bullet in his brain.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dum Dum/Male V</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A constant hum [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2069679</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>112</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Even after it’s all been unplugged, a constant hum</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>PLEASE give your hearts to amazing quellsome, who’s made fanart for this fic featuring v&amp;dum dum (nsfw warning)<br/>https://twitter.com/quellsome/status/1348177553899483136<br/>Thank you SO MUCH, it’s wonderful! I’ve been staring at it for weeks now.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>V pops the Omega blockers like candy. Silverhand has proven time and time again he can and will show up whenever the fuck he feels like. Issue here is, he feels like interrupting V’s personal biz, and V’s quite done with that. He’s got the stench of cigarettes on his fingers that just won’t go away no matter how long he scrubs them. The shit’s left an ashy taste in his mouth, and it’s been over three days since V’s indulged his parasite.</p><p>Realising he’s going off the deep end again, V drags his mind back. He’s popped the pills, he’s taken a few huffs of his stims, and he’s heading to a personal meeting with the Maelstroms. That last part has him a bit anxious. Dum Dum made it sound like it <em>is</em> personal, but V can’t shake the feeling it won’t be, and he’s getting into a lot of trouble. One more reason Johnny’s sealed safely away.</p><p>The evening’s hot despite it being late October. V walks. He’s going to be too fucked up to drive, he hopes.</p><p>The Maelstrom’s new hideout comes in sight. V ears catch the noise that’s supposed to be Tinnitus’s new gig set. The sound gets only more obscene as V comes closer to the building. He considers turning back as the old squat turned into a fiery mess of tech and cybercrazies from the gang comes into view. There are lots of people inside, a few taking smoke breaks outside, and a mean-looking guard standing at the entrance. It’d be no big deal to slip into one of the broken windows or stroll inside from the back, but V’s a guest here. He was invited. He’s going through the main door.</p><p>“Who’re you,” asks the guard, a huge goon with a synthetic voice and two red bulbs for eyes. He’s got no pupils or irises, but V can feel the gaze.</p><p>“Name’s V,” V says, feeling as all the energy and bravery from the stims wear off. If he thought he wasn’t feeling too good before, now, well. “Got biz with Dum Dum.”</p><p>“Dum Dum?” the goon hums, nods to himself after a short pause, and steps aside. “Look like a fine piece of meat, here. Comin’ to fix up that implant problem o’yours?”</p><p>V ignores the question. He’s got all the implants he needs. Maelstrom’s love for cybernetics comes with experience in the market, true, but V isn’t about to let anyone but Vik tinker with his shit. No, he’s not here to fix the implant problem.</p><p>Music blasts his ears as he steps inside. Probably gonna get tinnitus just from a single night here, but hell. V realises he actually has no idea where the fuck to go. Blood starts pumping in his chest and ears, and his skull implants make the sound ten times worse. He looks over the two wide doors one the ground floor, but it’s mostly commotion of a few groups sitting and gambling and drinking together. V climbs up to the next floor, then the next, and that’s the one with the bar and the gig.</p><p>The heat from the moshpit in the center of the room bodily slams him as well as an actual body could have. V makes his way through the less rowdy crowd at the outskirts, reaching the bar, when a steel grip squeezes his shoulder into a future bruise.</p><p>“V,” Dum Dum croons. His voice sounds exactly like last time, when the fucker was high while they talked biz and even higher when they fought off the Militech roaches. “You came!”</p><p>“Hell yeah I did,” V says, less enthusiastic. He should try, but there isn’t any energy in him. He orders a drink—just a wave of his hand, not sure what the bartender got from that—and is about to confirm the transfer when Dum Dum waves and the prompt disappears.</p><p>“Gimme my friend the best stuff,” Dum Dum says, his hand coming down on V’s shoulder in friendly pats that actually feel like hits. A dark, rusty drink appears before V. The glass’s stained, and the beverage inside has all the properties of something that’s been there for over a week. The smell’s clean, though—like pure spirit and car fuel, and V knocks it back to Dum Dum’s and bartender’s and the newcoming crowd’s amusement. He’s got no fucking clue why there is a crowd around him, now. Perhaps it’s because V here is the one looking like an organic piece of meat compared to everyone cyber-modded to high heaven. The amount of synthetic peripheral arteries in one room has V’s mouth drying, and he’s just had a drink. Fucking hell.</p><p>“C’mon, fuck, can’t you see you’re making my friend uncomfortable!” Dum Dum yells suddenly, and the crowd dissipates. V, to his own horror, can’t take the eyes off all the arteries, waiting for someone’s to catch on someone else’s implant and let the blood spatter show begin.</p><p>Dum Dum has the damn fucking things too, so when the rest leaves them alone, V’s treacherous eyes catch on his. He hates the fucking things.</p><p>When Dum Dum offers him black lace, V doesn’t hold back, and when that same rusty drink materializes before him, he knocks it back like water. He’s been here all of five minutes and is already high off his mind. His body floats somewhere in the air, and the weight of it on his feet is only a convention, one that’s easily discarded as Dum Dum circles an arm around his shoulders and leads him to a darker room. The music’s still ablaze, but it’s tolerable with the drugs and the drink.</p><p>A few gonks’re sitting in the room. Dum Dum doesn’t leave any area for hesitation, dragging V towards a couch. Just as V’s heart readies to jump out, though, the gonks open their mouths, and what follows is what V expected the least—they actually talk biz.</p><p>Dum Dum takes a sit right next to V, their thighs rubbing against each other. He puffs the inhaler and offers V more, then does again after a few minutes, and again, until the most recent thing V can remember is Dum Dum laughing and telling him <em>no </em>as V gestures for it again. To demonstrate why, he puffs it, presses the button, but nothing comes out.</p><p>V makes a frustrated noise as Dum Dum throws the puffer across the now empty room—no idea when or where the rest of the fuckers went—but it’s cut off as he grabs V by the jaw. Dum Dum leans in, body trembling. That tremble has V’s heartrate spiking. It’s the tremble of someone touching something fragile, something they really like, and fighting the desire to fucking squeeze it to death. Dum Dum leans his face to V’s, and licks his cheek, and sniffs him like V’s the crystal dust here.</p><p>“Trager wanted to fuck you so bad,” Dum Dum says. The low rasp of his synth voice causes sparks to fly in V’s stomach. His blood’s going south, and not much could’ve stopped V from grabbing at his crotch—except Dum Dum’s steel grip around his wrist, catching him halfway and almost crushing the bones.</p><p>V lets out a cry of pain. He’s so high and aroused the pain registers as something else entirely. Dum Dum’s dirty talk flies right over his head—V’s got no clue who Trager is, but in his state, he wouldn’t mind for someone that eager to rail him second.</p><p>Dum Dum gets him naked, face buried in the leather couch to the point it’s almost hard to breathe, ass in the air. He’s not ready for the penetration, though, tries to move away only to have Dum Dum yank him by his hips. He’s gentler and slower after that, and lets V have a puff from a new inhaler. Still, even with the high renewed, the feeling as Dum Dum enters him is awful. V tries to sneak a look behind him, see what kind of fucked up implant the fucker has there. Guesses Dum Dum takes it as him squirming away again, and leans half his weight into his hand of V’s back.</p><p>Through all this time, the sound of rushing blood in V’s ears is too loud, but it starts to die down as they establish a pace. Never stops hurting, though, and V suspects he could be bleeding.</p><p>“G-got a fucken’— <em>mod</em> or something,” he gets out through the pressure around his chest. “F-fuckin’ <em>hurts</em>.”</p><p>“Ain’t for <em>your</em> pleasure,” is all Dum Dum says. He’s making guttural, animal sounds. V drowns them out with his moans. <em>Fuck</em>, that shit hurts like hell. He’s starting to adjust, and the stretch and friction and the pressure on his prostate make the thing bearable.</p><p>V’s pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to walk, period, not even worried about walking straight.</p><p>Dum Dum comes inside and flips V over on his back. Goes down with his mouth—V’s optics go out for a few seconds at his own release—they calm down in a heap on the shitty leather couch, wet and sticky with sweat and come.</p><p>Dum Dum offers V more alcohol. They drink and even attempt a game of cards in their drunken stupour. It ends with him accusing V of cheating, which he is. Somehow, V ends up straddling the other man, though even V being the one setting the pace, the man’s dick feels for all the wrong reasons agonizing. Still, Dum Dum makes V come two more times, jerking him off.</p><p>It’s dawning when V comes to, Dum Dum snoring on the couch, his heavy body pinning V between him and the back of the couch.</p><p>The room’s a complete mess, and V would’ve never fucked in here were he in a right state of mind. He gets up, ignoring Dum Dum’s mumbling, going to pick up his shit when the pain in his ass and thighs knocks him off his feet. His left brow meets the corner of the low table next to the couch. Feels the warmth of blood on his face. The black in his vision fades away to the optics going up in glitching pixels. Among other notifs, V sees the one he dread the most—the relic, malfunctioning—and scrambles through his pain and the trash on the floor to his jacket. Swallows the Omega blockers dry and throws them up right the next second.</p><p>A moment ago, he didn’t even remember of yesterday’s drugs and alcohol, but now the pain in his head and his whole damn body rivals that of him getting rawed by the synthetic dick last night.</p><p>V retches a bit more, heaving on the dirty carpet. Won’t get any better any time soon, V reasons after a few minutes. His notifs are still lit up with the relic malfunctioning warning. Biting the metaphorical bullet, V takes another pill of the blockers, and swallows it down and the bile that follows.</p><p>A few minutes later, as it becomes clear he won’t throw up by just lying there, V stands up. The pain isn’t gone, and neither is the hangover, so V powers through, dressing up—damned be his skinny fucking leather pants—and fumbles through his OS functions and phone to call up Del.</p><p>Del, or one of his children, just whoever would come pick him up.</p><p>He leaves the room without looking back, feeling a pang of envy because Dum Dum most definitely has the pain blockers for mercs and all the whistles installed. V could’ve had that, too, though he doesn’t fancy the risk of dying without realising he’s injured.</p><p>One hell of a hangover cure, though.</p><p>The building’s pretty much dead. It’s way too early for most of the hungover patrons to wake up, and given that most of them are Maelstrom—more cyber than ‘ganic—they’d probably sleep this right off well into the afternoon.</p><p>V takes the elevator down, because the walk down the stairs would be worse than jumping out the window. Half-expects to see Johnny glitch into his field of view. Would’ve jumped outta the window to avoid <em>that</em> walk of shame, too.</p><p>By the time V gets to his own apartment, the sun’s bright above the city. V doesn’t bother with a shower, or the blinders, or even the bed—doesn’t quite make it, passing out next to Nibbles’ basket.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>have a small series focusing on johnny/v, healthy as could be, planned out. but this fecked up stuff is a necessary installment. hope u like it. please let me know!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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